


Apparent, Radiant

by icespyders



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Compliant, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Love Confessions, M/M, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-24 12:35:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7508482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icespyders/pseuds/icespyders
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hinata and Kageyama watch a meteor shower, and Hinata is overwhelmed with light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apparent, Radiant

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BonesOfBirdWings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BonesOfBirdWings/gifts).



The crickets trill in the night and the sound mingles with the unsteady rhythm of footsteps crunching on gravel. Together, they almost harmonize.

It’s summer break; Hinata has freckles on his nose from being out under the sun and practicing through the heat, still in his same routine. His usual team has been whittled down from the whole crowd at Karasuno to only Kageyama, practicing receives and serves and, of course, their quick, because neither of them know how to take a break from volleyball. But Hinata doesn’t mind whiling summer away in his company. In fact, he seizes every opportunity, every spare hour or minute or second. Like tonight.

“Are you excited?” Hinata asks, beaming at Kageyama through the dark.

Kageyama nods and Hinata silently appreciates how slow he’s walking so they’re in step instead of racing for once. Not that he has any problem with racing, but now doesn’t feel like the time. He knows their record by heart, even though the score’s somewhere in the hundreds by now; Kageyama’s ahead by one. Hinata forces his footsteps to be slow. “How many meteor showers have you seen?” Kageyama asks as reply, hands in his pockets.

Hinata can’t remember and it feels appropriate, somehow, that the number is countless as the stars themselves. “I always try and watch them!” he says. “They’re so cool, like, all of a sudden you see stars exploding and flying everywhere, all like _fwoosh_ , y’know?”

“No,” Kageyama says, and he’s teasing, Hinata can tell by the way the end of his mouth twitches, and Hinata leans over to punch his arm.

“You do so know! Or you will. You’ll see once you see it, I’m right,” he asserts.

They’re friends and it goes without saying now, despite their history, which would warrant at least some explanation if they were anybody else. But it doesn’t, and they’re not; to Hinata, it’s obvious evolution. They go together, like their names were made to be said in one breath: closer than Hinata and Kageyama, something more like Hinata-and-Kageyama, and the difference lies in the spaces that no longer exist.

There is one space, Hinata reminds himself, and he puts his hands behind his back so Kageyama won’t see them clenching into fists. One space that cannot be mentioned. It’s the space that dictates how far he reaches out. They can touch hands on the volleyball court after pulling off a particularly good play, they can hold each other for seconds after an important win, they can spend these hours together as friends waiting for the spectacle of a meteor shower, but Hinata cannot reach out and take his hand now.

He watches all the meteor showers that illuminate the sky throughout the year and he catches each fragment flaring out and he wishes for anything that pops into mind: to be taller, to win at tournaments, to catch the eyes of college scouts who weigh more and more heavily on his mind the older he gets. He doesn’t wish for Kageyama, because he hopes, somewhere deep down and hidden away, that he doesn’t _have_ to wish.

Hinata leads them to a patch of grass on the side of the mountain. Kageyama’s gone out of his way for this, far from his home in the valley below, and Hinata appreciates that, too, lets it feed the flickers of hope within him. They fall silent as they walk. Part of him wants to fill the space around them with an anxious overflow of words, because for some reason it’s nerve-wracking being alone with Kageyama out of context like this, in this place, in the quiet hum of a summer night. But he bites his tongue and kicks off his shoes, feels the grass and the wildflowers under his heels, focuses on that instead.

He’s snuck away to this place many times to watch the stars and the meteors and anything else that shines over his head and it’s never felt like words belong here; he always comes alone.

Kageyama’s footsteps follow him and remind him he’s not alone tonight, and knowing that makes goosebumps ripple up his skin and the air’s suddenly electric. He settles down on the grass, feeling the ground against his back. It roots him to earth even as he opens his eyes to the sky sparkling above, and both land and sky together settle his racing heart.

“Now what?” Kageyama asks, sitting cross-legged beside him, and his voice fits in here, fills an emptiness Hinata never noticed before.

“We wait.” When Hinata speaks, his voice is softer than usual and the sound sinks into the ground beneath him. “Lie down, you can see better that way,” he encourages, and it’s only a half-truth because he aches for the feeling of Kageyama lying next to him, not even touching, necessarily, just being present. Kageyama does as Hinata says and Hinata breathes in the smell of grass, the sound of crickets, the rhythms of them inhaling, exhaling beside each other, out of sync but together all the same. Their fingers brush against each other glancingly for a moment and words almost tumble past Hinata’s lips, but they flare out as he opens his mouth.

He’s not the best at waiting, always too preoccupied with being in motion. For the stars, though, he’ll wait. He can wait a little while a couple nights out of the year. He forces himself not to look at Kageyama and confront another thing he’s found himself willing to wait for, something with far less certainty than the stars. It was easy to demand Kageyama as a teammate, to fight for his tosses and, by extension, his attention, even if he hadn’t known he was fighting for that above all yet. Some things, though, cannot be demanded. They just can’t.

Seconds or minutes or hours pass, Hinata can’t be sure and it doesn’t matter. But then a lone light streaks across the sky and Hinata’s eyes dart to it. “There,” he says, pulling at Kageyama’s sleeve without looking at him, knowing where he is on instinct. “There, I think I saw one!”

Over their heads meteors start to fall between the pinpricks of stationary stars, disappearing behind the horizon almost as fast as Hinata can spot them and raise his arm to point them out. It’s beautiful, as always, and Hinata feels himself soaring again, like he’s a comet taking up the entire sky, like he can fly forever without burning up. One of the meteors, a bigger one, breaks into a dozen pieces and each fragment flickers and glows and takes its own path. Two of the split-off shards follow the same trajectory until they vanish, refusing to be separated even by ethereal explosions.

Today is the peak of the shower. Hinata watched the sky from his bedroom window this week, seeing more and more meteors every night, knowing the best was still to come and waiting for tonight, both for the peak and for the company. He knows - knows it deeply, down to the marrow of his bones - that even the very height of the showers are brief.

Soon all of this will vanish.

The hill they’re lying on will still be here when they leave. The mountains around them, the dirt paths marked with footprints and bike tracks, the fireflies and tree boughs and the smell of summer, all of these things are permanent. There will be more meteor showers through the summer, and in the fall and winter and spring to follow. Kageyama will still be by his side at Karasuno and on every court the team takes. He forces himself to know this, yet all he can think of is a timer counting down, robbing seconds from him before he can think to grab hold. It takes a minute for him to notice that he’s digging his fingers into the grass, hands clenched but seizing nothing, and forces himself to relax.

The meteors fade and Hinata looks away, instead glances at Kageyama. His mouth opens to tell him it’s probably over now, they can go now, something like that, because the excuse to linger is gone, but he doesn’t speak. Kageyama is still staring at the stars with a small, awed smile on his face. Blades of grass brush against his neck and tiny white buds of anemone flowers tangle with his hair, standing out stark, white on black on a bed of green.

Hinata thinks of the summer days that are slipping from him, fading into nights lesser than this one. He thinks of months that have already passed, time that hovers behind them and between them simultaneously. He thinks of Kageyama, who he thought was his enemy, who became his teammate, who became his friend, who he still yearns to reinvent in relation to himself one last time, if he could only find the right words.

But he has never been one for words; his body moves faster than his mouth tonight as it has a thousand times before.

This time his hands wander on purpose, and this time when Hinata’s fingers brush Kageyama’s it is not an accident and the touch lingers. “Hey,” he says as he moves, voice almost catching in his throat so it comes out hushed. Kageyama turns his head and the anemones in his hair turn with him and the sight of it steals the air from Hinata’s lungs. It’s so delicate, all of it - the tiny curling flower petals, the muted quality of the moment, the expression on Kageyama’s face. When they first met Hinata only saw the rough edges, the sharper outline, and Kageyama only saw his wildest flaring and most blazing heat, and it was only natural they collided as they had. But now he’s seen the fleeting smiles, the best outcomes of Kageyama’s unbound passion, the ways they can build each other wings.

Hinata can’t imagine what Kageyama sees in him now, but hopes it’s something as good.

“What?” he asks, and his voice is quiet too, and his eyes are searching Hinata’s face with the pupils blown wide in the dark, and he lets Hinata touch his hand.

Hinata’s mouth goes dry and more words extinguish themselves on his tongue, over and over and over again, meteors fracturing before they’re even visible. Out of the corner of his eye he sees one last flash of light cross through a cluster of stars. “I like you,” he says, finally, and it’s not poetic but it’s all he has and it’s the truth and it will have to be enough. Kageyama blinks but otherwise doesn’t move, not even to breathe, as if he’s forgotten how. “A lot,” Hinata tacks on to emphasize.

He doesn’t say, _That’s why I brought you here_ or _That’s why I wanted to share this with you because it’s special to me and so are you_ or _I’ve never brought anyone else here, only you_ or _I hope you wished for me but you don’t have to because I’m here and I always have been_. The words splinter before he can reach them and Kageyama has not said anything yet.

“Did you make a wish?” Hinata asks to drown out the panic roaring in his head, and his voice quivers in the air.

Kageyama leans into Hinata’s space and hesitates there, hovering. Hinata forces himself not to blink and watches Kageyama’s eyes slide over his face and settle on his mouth and Hinata tells himself he’s imagining it, he’s dreaming, he’s looking too close, he has to be, and then Kageyama kisses him.

It’s chaste and clumsy and only lasts for a few seconds before he pulls back and says, needlessly, “I like you too,” and he doesn’t say, _I know, I know, I know, I know,_ and he doesn’t have to. Hinata turns onto his side, moves closer, kisses him again, mouth landing on the corner of his lips at first before Kageyama turns his head to meet him, and their hands aren’t touching in the grass anymore, instead Kageyama’s fingers trace the line of Hinata’s jaw and settle on his cheek and Hinata can feel all the calluses from innumerable tosses on Kageyama’s fingertips touching his skin, and Hinata’s arm winds around Kageyama’s waist to tug him closer and their knees touch and their legs tangle together as they steal bursts of summer air from each other’s mouths.

When they break apart they keep looking at each other face to face, so close that Hinata goes cross-eyed for a moment but forces himself to focus. “There’s flowers in your hair,” he says through a laugh.

“There’s what?” Kageyama asks, moving to brush them out, but Hinata stops him.

“No, no, don’t. They look cute.” Kageyama scoffs at that, but only after Hinata catches a smile. “You didn’t answer the question. If you wished for anything.”

“Are you supposed to? I thought that was shooting stars,” Kageyama answers, brow furrowed.

“They’re basically the same.”

“Oh. Well, I didn’t. I was too distracted watching them, anyway.” Kageyama’s eyes search him again but he seems to find what he was looking for, because his face softens after a moment and his hand is still on Hinata’s face and Hinata smiles, closes his eyes, enjoys feeling it all instead of seeing. “Did you?”

“No,” Hinata answers. “No, I forgot to.” He opens his eyes and decides seeing is just as good as feeling as he looks at Kageyama’s face. It is not the first time Hinata’s seen him, but it feels like it could be. “I was distracted.”

They kiss again and the world is still. Even the crickets have stopped singing. Instead, Hinata hears every time Kageyama’s breath catches, every whisper of grass when either of them move, and when he inches close enough, he can pretend to hear their heartbeats thrumming in counterpoint. And, further away, he can hear something almost like a sparkler: one last meteor flaring out into darkness. But inside him the flickering only grows stronger, dancing beneath his skin. The sky falls silent, too, and Hinata binds himself to the earth with clasped hands and open mouths.

And Hinata decides that love is nothing like a meteor shower, because he’ll never stop burning.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. the "apparent radiant" is the point in the sky where a meteor shower appears to originate to a planetary observer! also, tragically, ao3 doesn't have a tag for meteor showers so i fudged it w/ stargazing. it's basically the same right  
> 2\. in hanakotoba, white anemones represent sincerity, and also according to somebody's nature blog i stumbled across they actually do grow in miyagi!  
> 3\. i had a lot of fun writing for you and i hope you enjoyed this sappy nonsense!!! i personally seize every opportunity to write sappy nonsense lmao. more importantly have a lovely summer!!!! uvu


End file.
